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by emidln 4837 days ago
If you do not know your language/framework well enough to adapt it to your circumstances, you certainly are not well qualified enough with said software to list it as something you "know".

This is one of the largest lies perpetuated on this site. If you know just enough of something to follow some tutorials and crank out cookie-cutter sites using Rails/Django/Asp/Grails/CodeIgniter/etc, but fail the moment you encounter basic ecosystem problems, you aren't a polygot. You're a liability to your team for not understanding anything well enough to work around common issues. You're probably curious and love to try new things, but the implied part of being able to proficiently wield whatever tool is correct, or at least on hand, is something escaping you.

If by polygot you mean you know some syntax, the basics of the ecosystem, and generic system design, algorithms, etc while expecting to dive as deep as necessary into any given environment, you're still failing the definition. This would be the point where you RTFS so you know where to override/monkeypatch/workaround.
2 comments
RegEx 4837 days ago
I don't know who you are, but this comment embodies the bad side of HN. "You" is in the above comment 15+ times - it's so personally insulting and unnecessary. Belittling some stranger's worth to their team is unproductive, toxic behavior. I'm upset I can't downvote this into completely matching the site's bg color.
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martinced 4837 days ago
+1 to you and -1 to the aggressive and insulting comment that prompted you to comment.

I see this a lot on HN too: people who've experience some level of success (as pg would say the first thing you learn when you get rich is that there are many levels of rich : ) and who hence think they know it all about everything and can constantly try to diminish others.

There's a lot of negativity here but, thankfully, there are also others who are here to share, educate and learn.

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sergiotapia 4837 days ago
I disagree. I count writing and selling commercial software with said technology as 'knowing' something. Academics be damned.
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